La contrainte à l’hétérosexualité et autres essais by Adrienne Rich

While he is glad that Black audiences have been supportive, Kehinde had hoped for more critical engagement. Kehinde is surprised by the lack of backlash directed towards Back to Black. The length of these journeys speaks of how significant this Black Studies course really is. A young man has come all the way from Cornwall. Though we arrive in a steady trickle, every person in the room is keen to be here. We are late to begin – Kehinde jokes that this is only to be expected when most of the group is operating on Black People Time. Last year FiLiA’s Lisa-Marie attended one of Kehinde’s lectures as part of the effort to make Britain’s leading feminist conference an actively anti-racist space, and her enthusiasm has made me especially keen to learn from him first-hand. The morning session consists of a lecture from Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, and I am very much looking forward to hearing him speak about Black radical politics. I spend the train journeys reading Kwame Nkrumah’s paper on African socialism and crocheting a headwrap, feeling only the faintest hint of longing for my electric blanket. There are few things in this world capable of enticing me out of my bed at 6am on a Saturday morning, but the Black Studies course running in Edinburgh is one of them. Since there is no formal coursework, I decided to direct the thought and energy leftover into writing about each session. A brief foreword: this is a personal reflective essay about the second day of Black Studies lectures taking place in Edinburgh.

La contrainte à l’hétérosexualité et autres essais by Adrienne Rich